


Sister Fare

by almadeamla



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: F/F, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-20
Updated: 2019-01-20
Packaged: 2019-10-13 09:07:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17485268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/almadeamla/pseuds/almadeamla
Summary: Lori likes to get lost in her memories. Shane indulges her, this once. Genderbent!Shane.





	Sister Fare

**Author's Note:**

> I’m importing some of my older works.

Lori loses herself in nostalgia whenever she gets the chance. She retreats into what her life had been, the what-ifs and could-haves, while Shane is trying to keep them alive in the here and now. Shane finds herself hating the scrapbook Lori brought with her, the scrapbook she packed over essentials like food and clothes. Space in a bag Shane could have used to store extra ammo.

Lori is sniffling over the thing in the dark when Shane crawls into the tent and curls up beside her, arm slipping around to hold Lori tight.

“His mom gave this to me,” Lori says. She wipes her eyes hard on her sleeve. “I was offended at first. I thought she was trying to tell me something. You know, that it was her way of saying she didn’t think I was good enough for him.”

“Rick’s mother loved you. Was always telling me about you.” Shane does her best imitation of Rick’s mother’s voice. “ _You and Lori could be such good friends. Isn’t Lori darling? Isn’t she just the prettiest thing you ever saw_?”

Lori laughs and the sound she makes is one like it's been dragged out of her. Nails on a chalkboard only prettier, ballad of a songbird escaped from hell.

“Me and Rick,” Shane adds, not sure where she’s going with it. Things just bubbling over and out. “Think it would have given her a heart attack. Shoulda seen her face when we were nine and I talked Rick into putting on lipstick and a pair of her high heels.” She chuckles some herself at the image, Rick wobbling while trying to walk in the shoes, lipstick a terrible red too deep for his paleness. Rick’s mother frantic at the sight of him, rubbing the lipstick off with her apron, glaring cold at Shane.

Still, Shane can’t help but follow Lori’s eyes to the scrapbook and the open page. To the neat Polaroid yellowed in the edges, date written on the bottom in black pen. She tips her head onto Lori’s shoulder to get a better look at it, nuzzling a bit into the softness of Lori’s hair fanned out onto the pillow.

Shane remembers the day it was taken. It’s one of her earliest memories of Rick, of anything. Preserved in her head with such vivid clarity, more real than the Polaroid there that wears and starts to fade. Mild water damage and it’s gone forever.

They’d gone to the fair the last day of summer before elementary started. Her and Rick four and delighted at the idea of going to school like the bigger kids.

Neither of them is looking at the camera. Rick has his face to her, beaming the bright and eager smile of a little boy. There’s chocolate ice cream all down the front of his shirt—blue polo to compliment the blue trim of her white dress, color coordinated by their mothers. His cheeks are messy, round cheeks that thinned out as he got older, sharpened into angles while Shane never lost the prominence to her jaw. Shame, an aunt had once told her. An old woman with white hair that smelled so harsh of perfume Shane held her breath every single time they hugged. Shame because that jaw was the only thing keeping Shane from looking like a china doll.

She’s ignoring Rick completely in the photo. Her head turned to the east. She’s watching the Ferris wheel do its spinning, heaviness of resentment in her belly, directed at Rick who was too afraid to go. And if Rick didn’t want to ride it she couldn’t, those had been the rules. So she had scowled something ugly and ignored her ice cream as it melted and dripped over the sides of her waffle cone.

Lori makes a soft noise, touches the picture, fingertip tracing Rick’s ice cream smudged face. And Shane closes her eyes because she doesn’t want to see it. Two of them holding hands like sweethearts, little fingers intertwined. They’d done that the whole summer. Holding hands everywhere they’d go.

She also remembers getting teased about it on the playground when school started. Rick and Shane sitting in a tree. K-I-S-S-I-N-G. She remembers feeling as if Rick was something dirty after. She remembers Rick reaching for her hand on the walk home and her letting go, sprinting ahead and leaving Rick alone.

“I miss him,” Lori whispers, snapping the book closed and rolling into her. She snakes her arms around Shane’s neck.

They were never close like this. Never girlfriends. Shane never had much of a want for it, wasn’t partial to the idea of trading Rick out for Lori, switching to appletinis instead of beer. But now Lori looks to her, eyes that are gray not blue but just as clear.

“I know.” She pats Lori awkwardly. She doesn’t have experience with this sort of thing. Girls found her too off putting growing up and Shane had always preferred the company boys. Rough and tumble, some of the women in her family had called her, which Shane learned later was just a nice way of saying she was anything but a good and Southern girl. “He’d want you to be happy though. He’d want us here, surviving, not wishing we could be with him.”

That was what she had wanted—death—that first second she realized she wasn’t going to be able to carry him, that she wasn’t strong enough to get him into a fireman’s carry and onto her back. It had only sharpened when she’d found no heartbeat and the thought of life without Rick gave her no incentive to go on.

She rubs Lori’s back. “I promise we’ll get through this.”

She’s not aware she’s doing anything, though that was always her problem. Shane never knowing how to turn off her flirt. She didn’t think it applied to this situation, didn’t dream of it, not until Lori is kissing her, mouth sweet and firm. She’s stunned for a second, tongue already curling to kiss Lori in return.

“I’m sorry,” Lori says. She pants apologies across Shane’s face. “I’m sorry.”

Lori’s not talking to her. She’s talking to the photo, to Carl sleeping on the cot in the corner, to the figure of Rick with them everywhere they go.

Shane feels lost in all of it. Feels Rick’s little boy hand in hers like a ghost. Feels Lori and the wetness of her tears, solid enough to touch. Lori pressed up against her, the two of them sharing covers, sharing a bed and a tent as if they’ve been friends forever. Lori pretending to be the first Grimes Shane has ever known, disregarding the smell of straw in summer and phantom sticky fingers, childhood infatuation and dripping cones. Lori and Carl replacing everything in Shane that Rick used to be.

“Don’t worry about it,” Shane says, tasting Lori and something more underneath.

A taste like a promise, one Shane can call her own.

 


End file.
